I tweeted about this yesterday and talked about it on my Twitter live post-show reaction, but I’ve been watching gaming conferences since before streaming and YouTube were even a thing. Back then, I would get a 12 pack of Mountain Dew Code Red, a party size pack of Skittles, sit down in my parent’s basement on our old family room couch, and watch E3 coverage on G4TV on a 14″ by 14″ cube TV. It was literally the only thing I did that week of the summer every year and I absolutely loved it.
So when I tell you that yesterday’s PS5 Showcase was the best gaming press conference I’ve ever seen, know that that’s including almost 20 years of press conferences. And I’m here 24 hours later after watching the conference from start to finish AGAIN, and I still think that’s true. That was absolutely phenomenal.
But as always, when there is a press conference it is tradition on PartyChat to dissect every single trailer. So let’s get started:
Final Fantasy 16 (TBD)
Not gonna lie, I thought this was a Game of Thrones game in the first 10 seconds and absolutely freaked the fuck out. The armor on one of the characters looked like Winterfell armor and the guys riding horses look like they could be Dothraki. But alas, it’s Final Fantasy 16. The last time I played a FF game was on my Super Nintendo so I’m not really that interested in this franchise, but it certainly looked really cool. For me personally, this is one of those games that I need to see reception and reviews before I’m willing to try it out. But for fans of the franchise, you should be ecstatic because this is the best that Final Fantasy has ever looked (and not just graphically).
Spider-Man: Miles Morales (November 12th, launch title)
I’m already seeing a bunch of Xbox fanboys tear this trailer apart because of a few minor graphical issues. Listen, this game is going ot be incredible. It is the sole reason I am buying a PS5. And yes, there were some graphical and animations issues that I saw as well but NOWHERE NEAR the level of issues that I saw with Halo Infinite. I’d compare it this way: imagine you owned an apple orchard and you made the best applesauce in all the land. The issues with Spider-Man are like if you found a few bad apples on the tree; you can just throw them out and use the good ones. No big deal, just a minor inconvenience. The issues with Halo are like if you found out AFTER you already made your applesauce that half the orchard is infested with maggots and you need to throw it all away and make a new batch.
Moral of the story: Spider-Man will be just fine and Halo is being made by a bunch of maggots.
Hogwarts Legacy (2021)
I cannot understand the Harry Potter hate that I saw on Twitter after this announcement. Are we all just pretending that we didn’t watch the fuck out of those movies? Like if there was one film series that could be labeled as “definitively millennial”, it’s Harry Potter. Also, no one outside of LEGO has actually made a decent game around the series so there’s a lot of untapped potential here. I am a bit worried that the developers of Disney Infinity (extremely mediocre game) are the team behind this tile, but everything I saw from the trailer looked pretty awesome. I’m gonna go ahead and predict the next time we see this title will be a trailer at The Game Awards and hopefully we’ll know from that whether its a MMO or an open world RPG.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (November 13th)
Great trailer but it didn’t really move the needle for me. I love the Call of Duty campaigns but they’re the last reason I buy a game, especially when Cold War is going to have standard multiplayer, a battle royale, AND zombies. But they showed off the ray tracing and SSD capability of the PS5 which was pretty cool.
The bigger announcement was that the Multiplayer Alpha will be available for free to all PS4 owners this weekend, which sucks for people like me who don’t own a PS4. I mean, it fucking suuuuucks. But I mean, that’s business; PlayStation still has a deal with CoD to bring them exclusive content first. Another great reason to buy a PS5 over an Xbox if you love Call of Duty.
Resident Evil 8: Villiage (2021)
I’m all in on this game. RE7 was incredible, this is a sequel to that game with FUCKING WEREWOLVES and a creepy ass village straight outta Outlast 2. This is a “day-one-buy-and-shit-your-pants” title for any horror fans out there.
Deathloop (Q2 2021)
Art? Love it. Premise? Kinda cool. Music and voice acting? Awesome.
But I’m still down on this game right now. I like the idea of a time-loop John Wick-esque shooter, but I don’t really know how the multiplayer aspect is going to affect the game. Can you turn it off or are you doomed to have people grief you all the time as the other assassin? How will it affect the pacing of the story? How will getting killed and reset all the way back to the beginning of the game affect the pacing? There’s a lot of questions in the air for me. Also, this is a Bethesda game and while the studio making Deathloop has a great track record (Dishonored 1 & 2, Prey), their last game Wolfenstein: Youngblood was ass, and Bethesda as a whole is on a losing streak. So yea I’m taking a wait-and-see approach still.
Devil May Cry 5: Special Edition (November 12th, launch title)
If you haven’t played Devil May Cry 5 yet, add it to your list. It was so much fun. I’m probably not going to replay it in the Special Edition version just because I’m not a big “replayer” unless its something like a Batman Arkham game or a BioShock game, but don’t let that deter you. This got snubbed from Game of the Year nominations last year when it should have been in most people’s Top 5.
Oddworld: Soulstorm (2020)
This is a game being released.
Five Nights At Freddy’s: Security Breach (TBD)
I think this is gonna be a VR game? No clue but I like that they added (lol) ray tracing. Like is everything getting ray tracing now? Mario? Angry Birds? Puyo Puyo Fever Deluxe? Regardless, I liked the teaser and I’m always down for a few jumpscares.
Demon’s Souls Remake (November 12th, launch title)
I’m all in on this. Never played it on PS3 and it looks better than even Sekiro, which just won Game of the Year in 2019. The original game got an 89/100 on Metacritic and it’s being remade by the team that did the Shadow of the Colossus remake so you know it’s gonna be good. And did you notice how the warping in the trailer is instant instead of a loading screen? PS5 SSD GO BRRRRR.
Fortnite (September 2017, launch title)
Yep, Fortnite (with ray tracing) is coming to the PS5. Shocker.
I don’t have alot to comment on this because I’ve moved on from this game other than don’t overestimate the impact of ray tracing on cartoony games. I thought the same thing you all are thinking about Minecraft when they first announced 4K with ray tracing, but it blew me away when I actually played it and I think Fortnite will follow the same path.
PlayStation Plus Collection (available at launch)
LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS.
Let’s be honest here: there’s like maybe 30 good games worth playing on the Game Pass, and none of them (as of today) reach the quality of the single player exclusives on PlayStation 4. We all know that. So how does PlayStation compete? By doing the exact same thing as Xbox but cutting out the fluff. No promoting indies that very few people care about, no Bass Pro Master 2017; just the hits. Genius move and I cannot wait to play some of the exclusives I missed.
PlayStation 5 Price Reveal & Release Date
And the anticipation is finally over: the PS5 is available two days after the Xbox Series S/X and one day before Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. I think the pricing is perfect all be it expected. Sony could have tried to undercut the Xbox Series X by $50 but I think they feel very confident about their exclusives and didn’t want to lose the revenue for that price cut. Where they completely dunked on Xbox was with the PS5 Digital; that console is an absolute STEAL. To build a PC with that hardware would cost anywhere between $600-800 more and it’s exactly the same console as the standard PS5, unlike the Xbox Series S. There’s no need to compete with that budget pricing when Xbox has already come out and said it’s a downgraded version of the Xbox Series X.
So here’s how this holiday is going to play out. If you’re a cheapo gamer, you’re happily buying an Xbox Series S because you probably don’t own a 4K TV or monitor. You’re the couch gamer that just wants to play the “bro bro” games like CoD and Madden for an hour a night when your wife and kids aren’t driving you insane. If you’re an Xbox fanboy who clearly doesn’t care about playing the better games and just wants to own “the most powerful console ever made” and stay loyal to a brand that has failed them for the last 6 years, then you’re buying an Xbox One X. Everyone else is buying a PS5 unless they can afford or already own a gaming PC (which is the smart choice if you’re an actual gamer who like to play the best of the best).
God of War 2 (2021)
This is what we call a “slam dunk” to end the game. All we see is an animated JPEG, but it shows that PlayStation isn’t slowing down any time soon.
Like I said at the beginning, incredible showcase and I literally could not be more excited to get a PS5 this holiday. However, I would like to take a few seconds to say…FUCK RESELLERS BRO. This pre-order situation is absolute bullshit. Walmart can burn in hell for starting their pre-orders a day before they were supposed to and causing the flood of reseller bots THAT ARE POSTING THE PS5 DIGITAL ON EBAY FOR $1200 FUCK YOU BRO FUCK YOU GUESS I’M STANDING IN LINE OUTSIDE OF BEST BUY AT 4AM LIKE THE GOOD OLE DAYS ON NOVEMBER 12TH.
